Unionized workers rally to save Postal Service plant at Stewart

STEWART AIRPORT — Unionized U.S. Postal Service workers and members of other unions rallied Thursday to save the Postal Service's local processing and distribution plant from consolidation or closure.

BY MICHAEL RANDALL

STEWART AIRPORT — Unionized U.S. Postal Service workers and members of other unions rallied Thursday to save the Postal Service's local processing and distribution plant from consolidation or closure.

The plant, in an industrial park at Stewart International Airport, has been among more than 200 nationwide considered by the Postal Service in recent years for operations reduction or to be shuttered altogether.

The goal is to save about $3 billion a year.

While a final decision on the Stewart plant previously was put off until 2014, Postal Service spokesman George Flood said the plan currently is to consolidate part of the processing operation with another plant in Albany by late summer.

Flood said the Stewart plant's bulk mail drop-off service, the customer service center and some processing operations would be kept at Stewart.

Postal workers aren't buying that.

Debby Szeredy, president of the Mid-Hudson Area Local of the American Postal Workers Union, said that same promise, or similar ones, have been made at plants that previously closed around the country.

"That's how they start," Szeredy said. "Then six months later they shut those operations, too."

The mid-Hudson processing center has about 450 employees. Previous estimates were that more than 200 jobs would be lost through consolidation, although Flood didn't have an updated number.

John Bouck, chief steward of the APWU local, said the consolidation will not save the Postal Service money.

For example, he said, the building at Stewart is leased for $1 a year. And mail being sent locally will be delayed if it has to go through the Albany plant, he predicted.

There are bills pending in both houses of Congresss aimed at curing the Postal Service's financial woes, particularly the 2006 requirement that the agency prefund its retirement benefits 75 years in advance.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-Cold Spring, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who are co-sponsoring the House and Senate versions of the bill, sent representatives from their staff to the rally.

Local postal workers are hopeful passage of those bills would make closure of the Stewart plant unnecessary.

Orange County Legislator Mike Anagnostakis and Assemblyman James Skoufis, D-Woodbury came to the rally to speak out on behalf of their constituents who could lose their jobs if the plant is consolidated or closed.

"It's just not right," said Skoufis, whose mother once worked at the plant and whose father was a letter carrier.